US President Donald Trump’s dismantling of US foreign aid, which started a year ago yesterday, has caused the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and would contribute to millions more, researchers say.
Humanitarian efforts to fight diseases such as HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in some of the world’s poorest nations have been massively disrupted since Trump froze US humanitarian aid immediately after being sworn in for a second term on Jan. 20 last year.
The freeze was initially said to be temporary, but in a cost-cutting spree advised by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, Trump eliminated 83 percent of programs by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was then dismantled.
Photo: AFP
Other major Western donors including Britain, France and Germany then announced deep cuts to their own aid budgets, compounding funding shortfalls for already reeling humanitarian efforts.
Researchers have since been working to estimate the impact of the cuts by the US, which previously contributed more than 40 percent of all global aid.
Given how crucial the funding had become to so many sectors in developing nations, most numbers are rough estimates based on modeling research.
The Impact Counter Web site estimates the USAID cuts have so far caused more than 750,000 deaths — more than 500,000 of them children.
That works out to be 88 people every hour, according to the analysis by Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease mathematical modeler at Boston University, which has not been peer-reviewed.
Different research conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) forecasts that more than 22 million people could die from preventable causes by 2030 due to the US and European aid cuts.
The research is to be published in The Lancet Global Health journal, principal investigator Davide Rasella said.
Other research by the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation last month said that 16 million additional children under the age of five would die by 2045 if the aid cuts become permanent.
The US funding cuts are the most significant setback in the fight against HIV in decades, UNAIDS has said.
While the Trump administration has said it resumed critical HIV services under its PEPFAR program, many people in developing nations have lost access to life-saving HIV drugs such as antiretrovirals.
Impact Counter estimates that more than 170,000 people, including more than 16,000 infants, have died due to the disruptions in PEPFAR funding.
A survey released yesterday found that the cuts have seriously affected the services of 79 community HIV organizations across 47 nations.
Access to drugs that prevent HIV transmission called PrEP has been halved in 80 percent of the organizations, according to the survey by Coalition PLUS and other groups.
The aid cuts are also “causing widespread and profound damage” to healthcare infrastructure in many nations, it added.
More than 48,000 people have already died from tuberculosis due to the cuts, according to Impact Counter, which projected the toll would rise to more than 2.2 million by 2030.
More than 160,000 children have died from pneumonia, 150,000 from malnutrition and 125,000 from diarrhea as a result of the cuts, it said.
Impact Counter also estimated that more than 70,000 people — three-quarters of them children — have died from malaria.
However, the true death toll of the slashed aid might never be known.
After the dismantling of USAID, many of the systems that once tracked deaths and diseases in developing nations simply “no longer exist,” said Caterina Monti, a coauthor of the ISGlobal study.
Sarah Shaw, advocacy director of the charity MSI Reproductive Choices, said that USAID funding was “like an iceberg.”
Underneath the visible parts — such as money for drugs — the US provided key funding for transportation, warehouses, software, training and education.
Monti gave the example of a child in a remote area suffering from diarrhea. The child not only needs access to a medical center with a supply of drugs — they need clean drinking water, proper sanitation and to be informed about the condition in the first place.
“It’s a very complex system — if you cut one piece, then the other pieces won’t work,” Monti said.
Shaw said that over the past year, many charities were able to find supplies still lingering in warehouses.
“But now all of that is gone,” she said. “Last year we were running on fumes — this year there will be no fumes.”
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